The 28 Most Frequently Mispronounced Fashion and Beauty Words

When Anderson Cooper flubbed the pronunciation of Manolo Blahnik (muh-NO-low BLAH-nick, for the record) during an interview with Sarah Jessica Parker—he called a pair of shoes "Bolanecks"—he managed to come off as charmingly unpretentious. When mangling designer names, the rest of us are more likely to sound like Elizabeth Berkley's clueless character in Showgirls, decked out in a dress by "Ver-sase." Of course we've all had those read-it-but-never-said-it moments with a well-known fashion or beauty brand name; even certain design words ("ombré," "ruching") can leave the savviest of tastemakers tongue-tied. In the past, we've "Coopered" everything from "décolletage" to "Shu Uemura"—but it ends now. Here, some of the most frequently mispronounced words in fashion and beauty, and how to say them phonetically.